Category: Shorties

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My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty: How We Perceive Ourselves and What Can We Become — The Story of Moses

Comment: See also podcast: How We Perceive Ourselves and What Can We Become — The Story of Moses (Podcast)

When Jehovah approaches Moses, assigning him his life mission, to rescue the Children-of-Israel from the bondage of Egypt, or, more specifically, sending Moses to talk to Pharaoh, ruler of Egypt, modest Moses responds:

“…O my Lord, I am not an eloquent man, neither yesterday nor the day before, nor since thou have spoken to your servant, because I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue” (Exodus 4:10).

In other words, I am stuttering and therefore not fit for the job.

In the original Hebrew, “I am not an eloquent man”, is, literally:

“I am not a man of words (Devarim)”.

What is the greatest legacy Moses has left to human civilization, as a messenger of Jehovah?

The Ten Commandments.

How are these named in the Hebrew Bible?

Let us read the opening verse, prior to a detailed specification of the Ten Commandments:

“And God spoke all these words (Devarim) saying” (Exodus 20:1).

In other words, biblical Hebrew for the Ten Commandments is

Devarim

(a consistent reference throughout the Hebrew Torah, as shown in detail in an earlier post, here ).

The last book of Torah, the fifth book, is the book of Deuteronomy (attributed, in Jewish tradition, to Moses).

What is its biblical Hebrew name ?

Devarim

Humble Moses, who had initially reduced himself before God as “A man of no Devarim”, same Moses grew up during his life span to bequeath humanity, as a messenger of Jehovah, two of the greatest legacies of human civilization:

  • The Ten Commandments (Devarim)
  • Deuteronomy (Devarim)

One can only wonder at this amazing lesson Torah is delivering to us,

A lesson in human growth; A lesson in human hope.

Categories
Historical Coincidences My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Why a Jewish Rabbi wondered that Sun in Hebrew not named Eretz (Earth)?

(Related podcast:  Why a Jewish Rabbi wondered that Sun in Hebrew not named Eretz? (Podcast) ).

Comment: This post is based on an excerpt from my book “Coincidences in the Bible and in Biblical Hebrew” (Shore, 2012, 2nd Ed.), Section 8.1.

As reported in Jewish written sources, the name Earth in biblical Hebrew was the subject of much debate and puzzlement over the ages.

The source for these was the fact that the name for Earth in biblical Hebrew resembles the word for… “run”— namely, “move fast” (Earth in Hebrew Eretz; run is ratz).

A Geo-centric world view, according to which all heavenly bodies are rotating around Earth,  was dominant for over 1500 years, until the late 16th century and onward, when it was replaced by the Helio-centric model of modern science (Wikipedia, Geocentric Model).

Living in the geocentric world view, Jewish scholars over the ages were puzzled about this resemblance of Eretz and Ratz (same philological root). They explained that this similarity is most probably due to the “fact” that the moon and the sun and all stars are “running” around the earth.

Rabbi Don Yitzchak Abarbanel (1437– 1508), a well-known commentator of the Bible, did not accept this interpretation. In his commentary to Genesis, he explained that “since the earth is a still center, it would have been appropriate that the wheel [meaning sun] should be called Eretz, and not the still center around which it revolves.”

Obviously, living prior to the historic shift towards the heliocentric worldview, Jewish sages have tried to fit their interpretations to the scientific knowledge of the time. Abrabanel rejected their explanations, based on pure logic.

The Jewish rabbi was obviously unaware that not many years later, Copernicus (1473–1543), in his book published not long prior to Copernicus death, would start the heliocentric revolution.

This resolved the quandary, raised by the Jewish rabbi, about a single biblical Hebrew word, Eretz, which to this day is used in Hebrew and in other languages (Earth),

describing accurately what planet Earth is actually doing, namely,

“running” around the sun.

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Historical Coincidences My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

A Succinct Description of Current Status of Israel

Deuteronomy 32:21:

“They have made Me jealous with Lo-El (literally, “No-God“),

provoked Me to anger with their vanities (Havalim, literally, “Nonsense“);

And I will move them to jealousy with Lo-Am (literally, “Non-people“),

with Goy-Naval (literally, “vile-nation“) will I provoke them to anger”.

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Historical Coincidences My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty: When was an Earlier Climate Change and What Caused it?

Earlier Climate Change:

“In the sixth hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, on that day all the fountains of the great deep burst forth, and the floodgates of the heavens were opened. And rain fell on the earth for forty days and forty nights” (Genesis 7:11-12).

What Caused It:

“Now, the earth was corrupted in front of God, and the earth was filled with Chamas” (plunder, extortion). “And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupted because all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth” (Genesis 6:11-12).

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My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: How Do the Ten Commandments Comport with Free-Will?

A Divine Commandment is always fulfilled, to the letter.

An example:

“And Elohim said: “Let there be light”, and there was light” (Genesis 1:3).

If that is so.

If divine command, by definition, is always fulfilled:

  • How is it that the same has not materialized with regard to another set of Divine Commandments, the Ten Commandments?
  • How come that since its inception at Mount Sinai, about three thousand and three hundred years ago, we are witnessing violating of the Ten Commandments by the human species throughout history, abundantly, continuously, right, left and center?

And more generally:

How do the Ten Commandments comport with free-will, endowed by The Creator onto humankind, the created?

Free-will is emphasized in the Bible, again and again:

  • “See, I set before you today life, and that which is good; and death, and that which is bad” (Deuteronomy 30:15);
  • “I call Heaven and earth to witness this day against you that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing; Therefore, choose life that both you and your seed may live” (Deuteronomy 30:19).

Hebrew prophets, likewise, do not cease to insist (emphasized mine):

  • “He has told thee, O man, what is good and what does Jehovah requires of you, but to do justice and love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Micah 6:8).

If emphasis on free-will is so prevalent throughout the Bible, and given the wide-spread ignoring of the Ten Commandments, throughout history, how should we account for this seeming inconsistency in the Bible?

The answer to this intriguing question is simple and straightforward:

In its original biblical Hebrew, the Bible does not have a concept of “Ten Commandments”.

Instead, biblical Hebrew for the Ten Commandments is “Devarim”.

The root of this word, in its verbal form, means to speak. “Devarim”, literally, implies divine utterances.

A thorough discussion of this concept, with biblical quotes, is delivered in:

“Diber” or “Dever” – Two Modes of Divine Dialogue with Humankind in a World of Free-Will .

* Shorty is a short post

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My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties Videos

Is Torah Divinely Inspired?

(Related podcast at: Is Torah Divinely Inspired? (Podcast) )

The first verse of Genesis reads:

“In the beginning Elohim created the heaven and the earth”.

This means that there are two worlds apart: The heaven and the earth.

Two cultures prevail over Planet Earth:

Culture 1: There is only “The earth” (namely, the observable physical world). There is no heaven.

Culture 2: There are two worlds, and our duty is to connect the two.

The first, Culture 1, prevails in current Western Civilization.

Culture 2 is cornerstone in Judaism, and probably also in other monotheistic faiths.

The question of whether Torah is divinely inspired is tightly linked to the choice between the two cultures (as succinctly outlined above):

According to Culture 2, Torah is divinely inspired. Therefore, it represents the Divine moral code, the spiritual dimension of our physical existence on Planet Earth, with the Ten Commandments at its center, and details scattered throughout the Five Books of Moses (Torah). If Torah is divinely inspired, we are here to connect the heaven and the earth.

According to Culture 1, Torah is a historic relic of human writings from ancient times. In view of the scientific progress, made over recent centuries, in understanding how the physical world is structured and how it is functioning, Torah is no more relevant to our lives. Torah can only serve in academia as a subject of scientific research of ancient cultures.

How do we decide between the two cultures?

How can we lend scientific validity to the truth of one culture over the other?

In other words: How do we scientifically prove, or disprove, that Torah is divinely inspired?

Numerous words and lectures, nowadays also videos, have been produced to address this extremely critical question. Endless number of words of persuasion, one way or another, have been put forward.

We believe that there is a single method to scientifically address this question:

To find out whether certain patterns, recently discovered by science to widely prevail in scientific models of the physical world, whether these same patterns also prevail in Torah and in its original language, namely, biblical Hebrew.

Can we scientifically demonstrate that, indeed, “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth”?

Three such research efforts have been carried out in recent years (expounded in three meticulously-produced videos by Oren Evron):

  • Rav Ginsburgh, on Fibonacci numbers in biblical Hebrew (Hebrew; English subtitles, please activate):
  • Professor Haim Shore (me), on the reflection of numeric values of physical reality in corresponding biblical Hebrew words (English):
  • Oren Evron, on the associations between numbers, relating to the first verse of Genesis (in its original biblical Hebrew) and constant Pi, cornerstone and frequent-visitor in numerous scientific models of physical reality (English):
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My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Values of Hebrew Day-Names in Genesis 1 Represent Ordinal Positions

All week-days in Genesis 1 have specific names.

These are (Hebrew, left to right):

Echad (“One”; Sunday); Sheni (“Second”; Monday); Shlishi (“Third”; Tuesday); Reviee (“Fourth”; Wed.); Chamishi (“Fifth”; Thurs.); Yom Ha-Shishi (“The Sixth Day”; Friday); Yom Ha-Sheviee (“The Seventh Day”; Sat.) or Shabbat (Sabbath).

Each of these biblical Hebrew names has a specific numerical value, the sum total of the numeric values of the Hebrew letters comprising the name.

Do these values represent the ordinal position of the days they represent?

Pursuing the same method used by me throughout my research of the Bible and biblical Hebrew (namely, “linear plot indicates same set of values, represented by two different scales”), the attached plot, with the explanatory comments that follow, seem to support the claim expressed in the title of this post:

Haim Shore_Biblical Day of Week_May 25 2022Download

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General Shorties

Black Holes and Near-Death Experience (NDE) — A One-way Flow of Information

(A related podcast: Black Holes and Near-Death Experience (NDE) — A One-way Flow of Information (Podcast) )

Black Hole is a place in space where gravity pulls so much that even light can not escape. There are three different types of black holes: Tiny, stellar or supermassive (Source: NASA NASA: what-is-a-black-hole?). Scientists have found proof that every large galaxy contains a supermassive black hole at its centre. The supermassive black hole at the centre of the Milky Way galaxy is called Sagittarius A. It has a mass equal to about 4 million suns and would fit inside a very large ball that could hold a few million Earths.

Near Death Experience (NDE) is a testimony, delivered by individuals who have biologically died, however have been resuscitated to normal life. The testimony delivers the experience an individual went through while the medical team struggles to return that individual to life. NDE is well documented for many years. An example of a recent report of NDE, one of many, is by Shaman Oaks (Jan., 2022):

Man Shocked by What He Saw His Pets Doing in Heaven

There are several features shared by most testimonies of NDE, like “flying” through a black tunnel, total life-review and others.

A basic condition of human life on planet Earth is our total ignorance of where we have come from, or where do we go after we die (if indeed the soul survives the body). This basic life-condition represents to us a unique experience of a one-way flow of information. We are aware of information we produce while we live, or information we are exposed to. Yet we are blocked from any information beyond our life-span, namely, pre-birth or post-death.

A similar statement of our basic human condition may be traced to the first verse of Genesis:

“In the beginning God created The Heaven and The Earth”.

We know much about The Earth (the universe), yet nothing about The Heaven. Indeed, the Bible does not describe the nature of The Heaven, neither does it explicitly refer to it anywhere else in the Jewish Bible, except for the first verse of Genesis (an exception is a single verse, which may be interpreted as describing a hidden two-way communication between humankind and The Heaven (of Genesis 1:1); Find details in this post:

The basic human condition: “Angels of God ascending and descending”.)

These four types of experience (or source of knowledge), accessible to us all, testify to the most fundamental of human condition on Planet Earth:

  • Total ignorance of where we came from (pre-birth), and where do we go from here (post-death, if at all);
  • Deafening silence (lack of explicit communication) on behalf of the “other side”;
  • Supportive testimonies of individuals (NDE), explicitly stating that to preserve free-will, while shaping our life-experience, we are not amenable to glimpses of the “other side” (except, occasionally, via NDE, or messages delivered by uniquely gifted mediums, spiritualists);
  • Lack of any knowledge of The Heaven (existence of which is explicitly stated in the first verse of Genesis).

There is one commonality shared by them all:

One-way flow of information.

Information of what play out here, on earth, is known and exposed to the “other side” (as revealed by NDE reports); Yet, we do not receive explicit communication from the “other side”, barring the possibility of a dual-way mode of communication!!!

These features of our everyday experience on Planet Earth share a surprising commonality with the most basic property of black holes — absorbing from the physical universe, as we know it, but never leaking back information, in the form of matter, energy or any other conceivable form of information (dark energy?).

This stunning similarity between the physical properties of black holes (the one-way flow of information), and the most fundamental condition experienced by us on Planet Earth (as expounded earlier), this similarity naturally begs the question:

Do black holes form one-way exit avenues, through which our souls are doomed to pass after we die?

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My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

“Shamayim” — The Most Counter-intuitive Yet Scientifically Accurate Word in Biblical Hebrew

(Related podcast: “Shamayim” — The Most Counter-intuitive Yet Scientifically Accurate Word in Biblical Hebrew (Podcast) .)

The word Shamayim in Hebrew simply means Sky (Rakia in biblical Hebrew; Genesis 1:8):

“And God called the Rakia Shamayim, and there was evening and there was morning second day”.

Rakia in biblical Hebrew, like in modern Hebrew, simply means sky.

So why, in the first chapter of Genesis, is the sky Divinely called Shamayim?

And why, according to the rules of biblical Hebrew, is it fundamentally counter-intuitive, yet, so scientifically accurate?

The word Shamayim comprises two syllables. The first is Sham, which simply means there, namely, that which is inaccessible from here. The second syllable, ayim, is a suffix, namely, an affix added to the end of the stem of the word. Such suffix in added, in Hebrew, to words that represent a symmetric pair of objects, or, more generally, to words that represent objects that appear in symmetry. Thus, all visible organs in the human body that appear in pairs have same suffix, like legs (raglayim), hands (yadayim), eyes (einayim) and ears (oznayim). However, teeth, arranged in symmetry in the human mouth, though not in pairs, also have same suffix. Teeth in Hebrew is shinayim. Other examples may be read in my book at Chapter 5.

Let us address the two claims in the title:

  • Why Shamayim is counter-intuitive?
  • Why is Shamayim so scientifically accurate?

The answer to the first claim is nearly self-evident. When one observes the sky, at dark hours, the observed is far from symmetric. So much so that the twelve Zodiacal constellations had to be invented, in ancient times, to deliver some sense to the different non-symmetric configurations of stars that to this day can be observed by the naked eye in the sky.

Yet, despite the apparent non-symmetry observed in the sky, the Divine chose to grant the sky a word indicative of the most fundamental property of the sky, as we have scientifically learned it to be in recent times, namely, its symmetry (as observed from Plant Earth), or its uniformity (as preached by modern cosmology).

To learn how fundamentally uniform (or symmetric) the universe is, the reader is referred to Chapters 5 and 7 of my book, and references therein. Another good source to learn about the uniformity of the universe, as observed via telescopes and as articulated by modern science, is the excellent presentation by Don Lincoln at Wondrium channel:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRQvp3XPH_s

Note the term Desert, addressed in the lecture. The term is used, in modern cosmology, to denote the uniformity of the universe at the Big Bang (“In the beginning”).

Surprisingly, the words, Tohu Va-Vohu, describing the universe “in the beginning” (Genesis 1:2), are also associated with desert, as they are employed elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible.

Consider, for example Jeremiah (4:23, 26):

“I beheld the earth, and, lo, it was Tohu Va-Vohu…I beheld and, lo, the fruitful land has become the desert…”.

Refer also to Isaiah (34:11).

So:

  • Shamayim is counter-intuitive and at odds with the picture, revealed in ancient times to the naive observer, our pre-science ancestors;
  • Shamayim yet accurately describes current scientific picture of the universe, as formed in the last hundred years or so, based on cumulative empirical data (gathered via telescopes), and based on modern theories of the evolution and structure of the universe.

Articulated more simply:

Whatever direction in the sky you point to, Shamayim states that it is all the same, contrary to what the naked eyes are telling us, in conformance with what modern science is telling.

Personal confession, mind boggling…

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My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

In biblical Hebrew — “Yom” is not necessarily “Day”

In a recent post (and an accompanying podcast), we have shown that Erev and Boker, in Genesis creation narrative (Genesis 1), do not represent “Evening” and “Morning”, as commonly interpreted, and as traditionally assumed. Rather, these two words represent, respectively, two states — one of “Mixture”, Erev, the other of its opposite, Boker (outcome of sorting out the mixture into its constituents, namely, a state of “non-mixture”).

Does Yom in Genesis 1 mean “Day” (as commonly translated into English)?

Or perhaps the word, as used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible, has a more general meaning, denoting, simply and non-specifically, “Period of time”?

To answer this intriguing question, we inspect verses in the Jewish Hebrew Bible, where Yom is used. The latter appears therein, with variations, no less than 2291 times. Naturally, in most cases Yom, and its variations, represent “Day”.

But…not always and not necessarily so.

We find out that in a considerable proportion of the verses, Yom simply denotes “Period”, whether in the future (future period, “in/on that day”) or currently (present period, “to this day”). We note that “Time”, in the common sense, does not appear at all in the Bible (where it rarely does appear, it means exclusively a specified point in time, like in “appointment time”). Therefore, “Day” is used instead to denote unspecified period of time. No other meaning can possibly be attached to the word, as it appears and being used in those verses.

Here are a few examples:

[1] “…he is the father of Mo’av to this day” (Genesis 19:37-38);

[2] “The lofty looks of man shall be humbled, and the haughtiness of men shall be bowed down, and Jehovah alone shall be exalted on that day” (Isaiah 2:11);

[3] “And it shall come to pass on that day that Jehovah shall beat out his harvest from the strongly flowing river to the Wadi of Egypt, and you shall be gathered up one by one, O Children of Israel” (Isaiah 27:12);

[4] “In that day shall the Lord of Hosts be a glorious crown, beautiful wreath for the remnant of his people” (Isaiah 28:5);

[5] “For the day is near, the day of Jehovah is near, a day of clouds, a time of doom it shall be for the nations” (Ezekiel 30:3);

[6] “In that day people will come to you from Assyria and the cities of Egypt, even from Egypt to the river, and from sea to sea and from mountain to mountain” (Micha 7:12);

[7] “On that day Jehovah will be one and His name One” (Zechariah 14:9).

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My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

“Becoming Holy” — The Bible Prescription

(Related podcast: “Becoming Holy” — The Bible Prescription (Podcast))

The desire to become holy, as a means to ascend to higher spiritual dimensions, is as ancient as human civilization.

But what does it mean to become holy? How do you become holy?

Several paths to holiness have been offered in the past. These include.

Path 1. Seclusion in an isolated place, disconnected from human beings.

Path 2. Refrain from talk (keeping silent) for an extended period of time.

Path 3. Pursuing the path of a Nazarite (including abstinence from the other sex and from alcohol).

Path 4. Adoption of certain dietary menus to cleanse the body, hopefully leading to holiness.

What is the Bible prescription to becoming holy?

It indeed departs appreciably from all the paths just described.

However, it is exact. And it is specific.

The Bible delivers a prescription to becoming holy in the form of ‘Do’s and ‘Do-not do’s. These are scattered throughout the Bible (particularly, in Torah and the prophets). Yet, it is described in detail, in a concentrated fashion, in a certain segment of the Jewish Torah, generally referred to, in Jewish tradition, as Parashat Kedoshim (Segment “The holy ones”).

The prescription starts with a Divine assertion, repeated, nearly verbatim, close to the end of the Parashah.

Here is the opening verse (Leviticus 19:1):

“And Jehovah spoke to Moses saying, speak to all the congregation of the Children of Israel and say to them: “Holy shall you be because holy am I, Jehovah your God”.

In a verse, prior to the end of the Parashah, the same assertion is repeated (Leviticus 20:26):

“And you shall be holy to me for holy am I, Jehovah…”.

Throughout the Parashah, the signature of the Divine is repeated, time and again, at the end of a set of ‘Do’s and ‘Do-not do’s, as if to remind the listener (or reader), of their Divine source:

“I am Jehovah”.

(For example, Leviticus 19:16).

In this post (and the accompanying podcast), we concentrate on a certain small segment of ‘Do’s and ‘Do-not do’s. They are not related in particular to the Israelites (as are, for example, dietary Kashrut commandments). These ‘Do’s and ‘Do-not do’s are of a universal value, applicable to all aspiring for holiness in their lives.

We refer to verses 16 to 18 of Leviticus 19. They represent some of the ‘Do’s and ‘Do-not do’s, prescribed by Torah as a path to holiness in Chapters 19 and 20. We start with the ‘Do-not do’s.

Do-not do 1 (Verse 16):

“Do not walk around offering your merchandise of slander”.

(Expressed in four words, in the original biblical Hebrew).

In short, do not engage in slander.

We note that slander, in biblical terms, means telling un-pleasant truths about a fellow human being. This is a profound diversion from modern judiciary systems, where slander exclusively means telling un-pleasant lies, about a specific individual or about a group of people. According to Torah, these do not constitute slander. These are simply lies, or falsehoods. In Torah terms, slander exclusively relates to telling truths, unpleasant or embarrassing as they may be.

Do-not do 2 (Verse 16):

“Do not stand still, while your fellow human-being is in a potentially threatening blood-shedding situation. I am Jehovah”.

(First sentence expressed in five words, in the original biblical Hebrew).

Do-not do 3 (Verse 17):

“Do not hate your fellow human-being in your heart”.

Do-not do 4 (Verse 18):

“Do not do wrong in return for wrong-doing committed unto you”.

In short, do not take revenge.

Do-not do 5 (Verse 18):

“Do not reserve resentment”.

We note, that resentment may lead to revenge. This is comparable to coveting (subject of the Tenth Commandment), which may lead to stealing. The Torah commands, in both cases — Eliminate the root-cause: Resentment that may lead to revenge; Coveting that may lead to stealing.

We proceed to the “To do” list in the same small segment (Leviticus 19:16-18).

Do 1 (Verse 17):

“Reproach your fellow human-being lest you carry his sin, on your account”.

In the original Hebrew text, a different interpretation is also possible.

“Reproach your fellow human-being lest he carries a sin, due to you”.

In other words, because you have refrained from reproach, when one was needed, your fellow human-being may carry a sin, namely, become a sinner.

Do 2 (Verse 18):

“Love thy neighbor as yourself. I am Jehovah”.

Five ‘Do-not do’s and two ‘Do’s in a very small segment of Divine prescription to becoming holy. These are a small representative sample.

To become truly holy, the Divine prescription, as articulated in Torah and in the prophets, need to be learned in depth, and then re-learned, and re-learned again. Until this prescription is practiced on a regular basis.

Once this happens, the prescription is engraved as a way of life, the ‘Do’s and ‘Do-not do’s are absorbed to become like second nature.

In the language of Torah, a ‘Do-not do’, which has formerly been observed as Divine command that needs to be fulfilled, is now replaced with “Not being able to do” (for example, Deuteronomy 21:16).

An aspiring individual, wishing to be holy, then no longer merely fulfills a Divine commandment: “Be holy, for I, Jehovah, am holy”.

Rather, he, or she, becomes God-like.

To become like God is an ancient desire. It had formerly been expressed, in Torah, in a perverted way, by Adam and Eve, who desired to be like Elohim (Genesis 3:5). To be Elohim-like means to resemble the Creator, namely, dominate nature.

This time, same desire, to be like God, is expressed differently, materializing the right way. It is expressed as a desire to become Jehovah-like via becoming truly holy.

Why becoming truly holy, Torah fashion, implies becoming Jehovah-like?

Because,

“I, Jehovah, am holy”.

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My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: The Pandemic — Divine Signal for End of an Era of Free-Will (??)

Jewish biblical prophets continuously relate to the era of free-will as temporary, not everlasting. I have referred to it previously and provided quotes form the Bible (for example, here and here).

Two major conclusions of these sources (and others) are these:

  • Free-will is temporary;
  • You cannot have free-will coupled with the certainty that God exists. The latter, by definition, deprives you of absolute free-will.

A poor analogy (yet herewith pursued) is when one wishes to commit an offence against state law, knowing the police is all around. This knowledge deprives you of absolute free will. There are limitations imposed by the ruler of the environment where you exist. Visible presence of the keepers of the law limits free-will. And a limited free-will, logically and by definition, is no free-will.

What is the most outstanding outcome of the pandemic (apart from threat to one’s own existence)?

“Social Distancing“

Fellow human beings no longer represent a focus of desire that one wishes to draw close to (whether for favorable, moral, intentions or otherwise). Rather, your fellow human beings pose a threat, a trigger for a fright and then flight (“Social Distancing”).

What does that imply?

We are forced to be on our own — alone with our own tribe (cessation of international traffic), alone with our own family (when state lockdown is imposed), or not-alone with our own self (when individual isolation is imposed). We are then forced to learn our own nature — exercising introspection, learning who we really are, who our family are, what keeps our tribe together.

There is another aspect to how the pandemic forces us to limit our absolute free-will. We no longer have the absolute freedom to “Escape from Freedom” (to borrow a term from Erich Fromm’s book of same title). No longer can we rely on society to think for us (via mass communication channels), making decisions for us, choose for us. Barring absorption in society via “social distancing”, escape from freedom becomes harder to pursue.

A plague in biblical Hebrew is Dever, from the root “to speak”; Not much different from Davar or Diber (the biblical Hebrew singular for The Ten Commandments, Dvarim or Dibrot, respectively; find details in another post on this blog).

If we consider the plague, this lesson in modesty for humankind, as:

  • A Divine signal to prepare for things to come;
  • A Divine signal to be on our own, stop being confused by the society around us, concentrate on our own very “Life Condition”;

If we consider the plague that way, does current pandemic imply that in the near future a catatonic change in our perception of reality is about to happen?

(“For then I will convert to peoples a purified language; that they all call upon the name Jehovah to serve Him shoulder to shoulder”; Zephaniah 3:9)

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  • shorty* is a short post
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Historical Coincidences My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: Coronavirus in biblical-Hebrew (??)

The name of the rapidly spreading epidemic, now becoming pandemic, the Coronavirus, may be read as biblical-Hebrew in two modes:

  • As an original Hebrew word (it is not!); In that case one may wonder— What would the biblical-Hebrew root of this word be?
  • “Translated” into biblical-Hebrew (namely, the word Crown); In that case one may ask— What is the biblical-Hebrew root of this word, or other Hebrew words originating in the same root or a permutation thereof?

As have happened often before (relate to chapter 19 in my book, and read also here and here), names originating in non-Hebrew languages surprisingly often tend to carry significant meaning in the Hebrew language, namely, embody meaning directly related to the essence of that which the non-Hebrew word stands for. A typical example from the Torah is Pharaoh, known to be a real historic figure (ruler of Egypt in ancient times). When considered as a Hebrew word (it is not!), the root of this word gives rise to various words implying acts of violence. For example, the biblical Hebrew Praot (Judges 5:2) has routinely been used, in modern Hebrew, to describe pogroms, namely, unrestrained maiming and killings of Jews (in exile). Such acts were probably also executed during Pharaoh reign, when Jews were slaves to the king (as described in Exodus).

Let us address individually each of the two options to relate to “Corona” (namely, as originally biblical-Hebrew, or relate to its biblical-Hebrew translation).

1.      “Corona” as originally biblical-Hebrew

Several Hebrew words have structure similar to Corona. Ignore, temporarily, the letter “a” (later to be addressed as a suffix). The word “Coron” has similar Hebrew words of the same structure. We have in Hebrew Svivon, derived from the root S.B.B, and we have Shomron, derived from the root S.M.R. When words represent names of places, adding “a” as a suffix (in Hebrew, the letter Hei), implies in biblical-Hebrew “in the direction of”. For example, “I go Shomrona” means “I am going to Shomron“.

So, were “Coron” a biblical-Hebrew word, what would its root be?

In the same manner that we have determined the roots of  Shomron or Svivon, the root of “Coron” would be K.R.H, which gives rise to such words as Mikreh (coincidence), Karah (occurred; also cold (n.)) and Keri. The latter is of particular importance. In the Bible, it appears seven times in Leviticus, Chapter 26, and only there. I have discussed this word at length in my book (Section 3.3), and, more generally, the concept of “Randomness” in biblical-Hebrew and in the Bible. In Leviticus (26), God warns the Children of Israel that if they walk with Him in keri (pretending everything that occurs is accidental, random), then He will walk with them with the wrath of keri, punishing them seven times over for their transgressions. The Torah repeatedly warns, here and elsewhere, against pursuing a worldview that all that one experiences in life is coincidental (rather than an act of the Divine – “Shall not the Judge of all the earth do justice?”, Gen.:18:25). The biblical embodiment of this worldview is Amalek, who had waged war against the Children of Israel on their way to the promised land (Exodus 17:8). When Moses leaves his instructions to the Children of Israel, prior to his departure, he requests that they remember Amalek who “has occurred to you”, while you, the Israelites, were somewhat like Amalek at the time, “tired and exhausted and not God-fearing” (Deuteronomy 25:17-18).

It is indeed stunning that the World Capital of this worldview (“all is coincidental”) is:

  • The country where the ruling culture has totally expelled (from amidst its population) God and worshippers of God;
  • The country ruled by the most secular regime on Planet Earth (deriving its legitimacy from the ruling Chinese Communist Party);
  • The country that has originated one of the most devastating pandemics the human species has ever witnessed (this post is written while the epidemic is evolving into a pandemic, based on the prevailing prognosis regarding its future evolution).

And the name of the virus, originating that pandemic, rings like, well, …coincidence.

2.      “Corona” and Crown in biblical-Hebrew

Assuming that the name Corona has indeed originated in Crown, we inspect its translation into biblical-Hebrew, Keter. The root is K.T.R, a permutation of which is K.R.T. The latter root originates numerous words, which appear no less than 285 times in the Jewish Hebrew Bible. The plain and straightforward meaning of the Hebrew verb Li-Chrot is to cut, like cutting-off branches of a tree, or cutting trees. From this, the meaning of the word expanded to mean also annihilate, or destroy, or perish. Examples:

  • “I establish my covenant with you: Never again will all life be cut-off (lo ikaret kol basar od) by the waters of a flood; never again will there be a flood to destroy the earth” (Genesis 9:11);
  • “Because he has despised the word of Jehovah, and has violated His commands, that soul shall utterly be cut-off (hikaret tikaret), his iniquity shall be upon him” (Numbers 15:31);
  • “…and all that harbour iniquity shall be cut-off (ve-Nichretoo)” (Isaiah 29:20).

We realize that the non-Hebrew “Corona”, translated into Hebrew and its biblical-Hebrew root permutated, produces an accurate description of the final effect of this pandemic.

Pandemic in Hebrew, Dever, from the root D.B.R. This root gives rise to various verbs and nouns associated with… speaking, either human or Divine. Thus, the Ten Commandments are the Ten Dibrot; And “a thing” is Davar (implying that all result from Divine speaking). In the desert did the Divine speak to humans (Ten Commandments given to the Israelites, through Moses, in the Sinai desert). Desert in biblical Hebrew — Midbar.

This pandemic, Dever, has taught a world, built on the model of the Tower of Babel (“..let us build us a city and a tower, whose top reaches to The Heavens, and make us a name..”, Genesis 11:4) — this pandemic has taught the world a painful lesson in humility. With cessation of international aviation, the adored “Global Village” has noisily smashed into hundreds of separate, nearly disconnected, villages scattered upon the face of all the earth: “And Jehovah scattered them abroad from there upon the face of all the earth..”, Genesis 11:8.

An ancient biblical story and a current historic event — describibg a similar world transformation; sharing the same final outcome…

Final quotes from prophets Isaiah and Zechariah, describing the Final Judgement at End-Times:

“Go, my people, enter your rooms and shut the doors behind you; hide yourselves for a little while until indignation is overpast. For, behold, Jehovah is coming out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; The earth shall disclose the blood shed upon her, and shall cover no more her slain.”    (Isaiah 26:20-21)

“And it shall come to pass”, declares Jehovah, “that in the whole land two parts in it shall be cut-off (ikaretoo), perish; but the third shall be left in it. And I will bring the third through the fire, and I will refine them as silver is refined, and try them as gold is tried. They shall call on my name and I will answer them…”   (Zechariah 13:8-9).

And then:

“Jehovah will be king (“Crown”) over the whole land;

On that day Jehovah will be one and his name One.”

(Zechariah 14:9)

  • Shorty is a short post

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Comments:

[1] This comment is added in response to readers’ questions about permutation of K.T.R (root of Keter, “Crown”) into K.R.T (root of Karet, “Cut-off”). In Kabbalah, Keter is the first (uppermost) of the Ten Sephirot, describing “Divine superconscious Will that is beyond conscious intellect” (Wikipedia, entry “Sefirot”). In Jewish tradition, distortion (permutation) of the right order of the root-letters of a biblical-Hebrew word, related to the Divine, may generate words representing the harmful, the undesirable. Thus, for example, Tom (completeness, righteousness; a two-letter word) becomes, permutated, Met (a deceased person; a two-letter word); Osher (riches, abundance), permutated, becomes Resha (evil). In the orderly alphabet, Emeth (truth; a three-letter word) appears in the correct order, however the three letters of Sheker (lie, falsehood) appears as a permutation of the correct order (read more here).

[2] A while after this post went on-line, I came across a most recent talk by Rabbi Sacks, who, not surprisingly, also discusses at length the meaning of the central biblical Hebrew concept, addressed in this post— Keri. You may wish to view this talk to learn in more depth this term and its implications:

Corona pandemic and the biblical Keri_Talk by Rabbi Sacks_March 26 2020

[3] A most inspiring talk by Rabbi Elyahu Kin: “In the Shadow of the Corona Virus” (English; Hebrew subtitles):

In the Shadow of the Corona Virus_Talk by Rabbi Kin_April 3 2020

[4] The Coronavirus pandemic, denoted by WHO (World Health Organiztion) — COVID-19 (COronaVIrus Disease-2019), is indicative of, sounds like — Kavod (a stunning insight by Avinoam Ben-Mordechai); Read a separate post about Kavod here here.

Categories
Historical Coincidences My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Pi First Digits and Genesis First Verse

(see a related post at: “And the Earth” (Genesis 1:1) Delivers the First Seven Decimal Digits of Pi )

Pi digits are generally considered to be random (as judged by statistical testing). Are they??

First ten Pi digits are: p=3.141592654… (Last digit rounded).

In the last few weeks, my good friend, Oren Evron, producer of most videos about my research on the Bible and on biblical Hebrew, has been engaged finding links between Pi and the first verse of the Hebrew Bible (Genesis 1:1):

בְּרֵאשִׁית בָּרָא אֱלֹהִים אֵת הַשָּׁמַיִם וְאֵת הָאָרֶץ.

Likelihood values for his results (their probability to occur randomly) have been generated via extensive computer-simulation studies (conducted by him). His findings are astounding. A video detailing these has now been published by Oren Evron (Hebrew, English):

Code of Creation (Part 1; Hebrew) Oren Evron Nov 29 2019

Code of Creation (Part 1; English) Oren Evron April 13 2020

Code of Creation (Part 2; Hebrew) Oren Evron Jan 2022.

You may read about Pi in Wikipedia, entry: Pi. See also an earlier post on this blog:

Fibonacci series, Pi, Golden Ratio — Simple Relationships

To-date, the digits of Pi (a transcendental number) have been considered random. Are they?

Adding to Oren Evron Research, I display in this post my own contribution, one of two (the other may be read here ). Both are not included in Oren’s videos.

Consider the first ten digits of Pi (last digit not rounded):

{3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9, 2, 6, 5, 3}.

Next, observe word lengths (number of letters in a word) for the seven Hebrew-words comprising the first verse of the Bible (Genesis 1:1):

{6, 3, 5, 2, 5, 3, 4}.

We realize that the second sequence is contained in the first, namely, the second series is a subset of the first series (taken from Pi), comprising 70% thereof. Only three digits in the first series (marked black) are not in the second. Conversely, all digits in the second series (with their exact frequencies) appear in the first.

(Comment: Reading the second series as Hebrew, from right to left, we obtain (read from left to right):

{4, 3, 5, 2, 5, 3, 6};

This is  incredibly close to the order that these digits appear in the first ten digits of Pi; In fact, one needs only two changes, swapping first 3 with 4 and moving 6 before 5, to preserve the original order of these digits, as they appear in the first ten digits of Pi!!!).

How probable is this result (second series contained in the first)?? What is the likelihood for this finding to occur randomly?

We have conducted a computer simulation, in which the computer randomly generated a million sets of ten digits (each digit with probability 0.1 (10%) to be selected). We then counted the number of sets that contained exactly the second set (by exactly we mean including frequency, for example, if “5” appears twice in the second set so it is in the simulated set).

Based on this simulation experiment, we have obtained for the probability of the second set to be exactly contained in the first to be 0.0019 (0.2%), namely, for a significance level of half a percent (0.5%), a statistically meaningful result (“significant result”). By conventional norm in scientific research studies, this is a highly significant result, indicating that the finding is probably not coincidental.

This result, on its own, might be considered by some as “cherry picking”. Combined with Oren Evron’s new findings, as displayed in his latest movie (promo to English version: Pi in the Bible – Amazing New Findings!), any claim of “cherry picking” becomes baseless — the link between the first verse of Genesis and physical reality (as represented by Pi) is now an established scientifically-observable fact.

  • Another of Oren Evron’s videos — Findings of Rabbi Yitzchak Ginsburgh about a relationship between Fibonacci and biblical Hebrew (Hebrew; For English, activate captions!):

Fibonacci in the Torah – Genesis Golden Ratio

  • Links between Pi and Fibonacci numbers (post on this blog):

Fibonacci series, Pi, Golden Ratio — Simple Relationships

Categories
General My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: The Basic Human Condition — “Angels of God Ascending and Descending” (Gen. 28:12)

(Related podcast:  Basic Human Condition: “Angels of God Ascending and Descending” (Gen. 28:12; Podcast-audio) .)

The Bible starts with a succinct description of all that there is:

“In the beginning God created The Heaven (“Ha-Shamayim“) and The Earth (“Ha-Aretz“)” (Gen 1:1).

This seven-word verse (in the original Hebrew) delivers four messages:

  • There is God; * There is creation; * God and His Creation are separate (pantheism is false); * There is a point in creation when time started (“In the beginning”);

However, there is an additional most important fifth message:

* There are two worlds apart: The Earth and The Heaven.

In the rest of Genesis creation narrative (Chapters 1 and 2), “The Heaven” is not addressed ever again. Genesis describes only that which is visible, or potentially visible, to humankind — “The Earth” (more specifically, the universe). As part of the description of the six days of creation of The Earth, the narrator relates to two separate parts of the universe (“The Earth”):

  • That part that God calls heaven (“The” omitted) — “and God called the sky (Rakia) heaven (Shamayim)…”, Gen. 1:8;
  • That part that God calls Earth (“The” omitted) — “and God called the dry land (Yabashah) Earth (Eretz)…”, Gen 1:10. However, The Heaven (Ha-Shamayim) is not repeated again, neither described nor implied. When alluding to Shamayim, Genesis 1 refers only to Rakia-Ha-Shamayim, as if to emphasize that this is not Ha-Shmayim of the first verse of Genesis.

These two worlds, The Heaven and The Earth, are they communicating with one another?

The Bible is mostly mute about it. Existence of free-will for the human species cannot co-exist with the explicit and undeniable knowledge that The Heaven does exist, that it influences our experiences in life and that… it responds to our decisions.

This should be contrasted with our explicit knowledge of The Earth (the scientifically observable universe), governed by law-of-nature. The latter allows us knowing, or potentially knowing, how “it influences our experiences in life and respond to our decisions“. For example, we know well in advance how nature would respond if we have decided, out of free will, to jump from the rooftop of a highrise.

So, is the Bible indeed utterly mute about communication between The Heaven and The Earth? Is there such communication at all?

There are stories of communication between the Divine and human beings, either one-way communication, like the Ten-Commandments, or two-way communication, like biblical stories of dialogues between the Divine and human beings (“…perhaps ten shall be found there? And He said: I will not destroy for the sake of the ten”, Gen 18:32). Yet, these stories relate to direct communication between man and God, not between “The Earth”  and “The Heaven”, both created (according to the first verse of Genesis). Also, they are not as compelling as Law-of-Nature — You believe these stories or you do not. Same cannot be extended to Law-of-Nature:

Free-will is preserved, maintained and protected with regard to possible “dialogues” between human beings and The Heaven — these are completely invisible to us; Free-will is not so with regard to “dialogues” between human beings and Law-of-Nature (The Earth) —  these are visible to us in their entirety.

Areas in our lives that are not subject to Law-of-Nature are areas where free-will is exercised. These are the areas where The Earth and The Heaven communicate. However, to preserve free will, Scripture is mostly mute about this communication‼

There is one exception — a single verse in the Bible that describes, in a very vivid way, the basic condition of humankind, namely, the untold and intuitively unrecognizable continuous dialogue, maintained by us all, between The Heaven and The Earth:

“And he dreamed and, behold, a ladder set up to The Earth and its top reaches to The Heaven; and behold angels (Malachim) of Elohim ascending and descending on it” (Genesis 28:12).

To fully understand this verse, and the function of  ladder in Jacob’s dream, let us be reminded what “Angel” (Malach) is in biblical Hebrew — a messenger (human or non-human), dispatched for an explicit purpose, to deliver a certain message or to perform a certain task. Examples:

  • “The Lord God of The Heaven, who took me from my father’s house… He shall send his angel (Malacho) before thee…” (Genesis 24:7);
  • “And Jacob sent messengers (Malachim) ahead of him to his brother Esau in the land of Seir, the country of Edom” (Genesis 32:3);
  • “The angel (Ha-Malach), who has redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads…” (Genesis 48:16);
  • “And there came a messenger (Malach) and said…” (Job, 1:14).

We realize that same word, Malach, serves in Scripture to describe delivery of two sorts of “messages” — one via words, another via actions; Also, same word, Malach, is used for both human and non-human messengers.

In view of the new insight about the meaning of Malach, what does it mean that messengers are ascending and descending on a ladder that connects “The Earth” and “The Heaven”?

There can be a single interpretation:

“Messages” are being exchanged between the two worlds, explicitly declared to exist in the first verse of the Bible — “The Heaven” and “The Earth”‼

These messages are being exchanged, unknowingly to us, continuously; And they are delivered by us by thought, by word and by action. Wishes that we express, prayers that we pray, acts of grace and righteousness, or, conversely, acts of evil, these are all “messages” sent by us, via “ascending messengers”, to “The Heaven”; Experiences we go through, which look to us random and not the outcome of interference of Law-of-Nature, these are “messages” sent back to us, by “descending messengers”, from “The Heaven”.

And these experiences, from the realm of “randomness”, where free will reigns supreme, unconstrained by Law-of-Nature, these are doomed to remain unexplainable so long as free-will is preserved and the Divine is hidden, hiding also His hiddenness (“aster astir panai“, Deuteronomy 31:18).

There are three well-known symbols signifying that same idea, an ongoing dialogue between The Heaven and The Earth.

  • God relates to the rainbow, a bow aimed to Heaven from Earth, as a reminder, a message, sent to Him from humankind and all living beings on earth: “I have set my rainbow in the clouds, and it will be a sign for the covenant between me and the Earth; Whenever I bring clouds upon the earth and the rainbow appears in the clouds, I will remember my covenant, which is between me and you and all living creatures of every kind, so that never again will the waters become a flood to destroy all life” (Genesis 9:13-17);
  • In the most well-known symbol of the Jewish faith, the Magen David, there are two triangles: One aimed from Earth to Heaven, another directed from Heaven to Earth;
  • The pyramids of Egypt are similarly built as a triangle directed from earth to heaven.

In Conclusion:

The most basic condition of humankind is existence of a dialogue between “The Earth” and “The Heaven”, the two parts of creation alluded to in the first verse of the Bible (and only there). This dialogue is maintained via two channels:

  • A visible dialogue between all living creatures and Law-of-Nature; The latter, unexplainable but well described (by science), is all observable; In this “Dialogue”, Law-of-Nature is forced on us for full compliance — no compromise, no freedom of choice;
  • A hidden dialogue, partially visible to us in the sense that only “messages” from The Earth may be recognizable; By contrast, to preserve free will, messages from The Heaven are invisible, incomprehensible to us; Yet, not always and not completely:
    • At times, they may be deduced, providing explanation to our experiences as Heavenly response (descending angels) to our own “messages” (ascending angels);
    • At other times, they may not even be deduced, doomed to remain hidden and utterly unexplainable (“..and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy”, Exodus 33:19; “Why bad things happen to good people”).
  • Shorty is a short post
Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: Are Genesis Creation “Days” Regular Days?

What is the true meaning of Genesis creation “Days” — Are these regular days?

This has always been to me an extremely bizarre question. Yet, it has been a recurring subject in comments of viewers watching videos that describe my data-based research on Genesis Creation narrative.

Two common answers to what “Day” means in Genesis creation rely on terms and quotes from Scripture. We deliver these answers in the form of claims:

Claim I —  Genesis “Day” is a regular 24-hours day (due to appearance of the basic components of a regular day, namely, “Evening” and “Morning”):

This claim is based on the use, for each creation day, of two Hebrew words — Erev (Evening) and Boker (Morning) — as in: “..and there was evening and there was morning one day” (Genesis 1:5).

I believe that this common interpretation of the meaning of Erev and Boker is misplaced. In the original biblical Hebrew, the two words can be differently interpreted. Erev indeed means evening but also mixture, for example, a mixture of people from different tribes, a mixture of people living in the desert or a mixture of different animals:

  • “And a mixed multitude (Erev Rav) went up also with them…” (Exodus 12:38);
  • “And all the kings of Arabia (Arav) and all the kings of the mixture of people (Erev) that dwell in the desert” (Jeremiah 25:24);
  • “And Jehovah did so and there came a dense swarm of gnats (Arov) into the house of Pharaoh…” (Exodus 8:20).

Similarly, Boker derives from a root that means the opposite of mixture or chaos, namely, separation of the elements of a mixture into its individual components, instituting control and order:

  • “He must not pick out (Yevaker) the good from the bad…” (Leviticus 27:33);
  • “As the lookout (Ke-vakarat) of a shepherd after his flock, when he is with his sheep that are strayed, so will I look after (Avaker) my sheep and will rescue them from all the places that they were scattered on a day of clouds and darkness” (Ezekiel 34:12).

In modern-day Hebrew, Bakarah simply means… control‼

Thus, “and there was Erev and there was Boker” simply conveys a description of a transition from a state of chaos, where all is mixed together, lacking distinguishable elements that render control feasible, to a state of distinction, order and control.

How incredibly scientific and up-to-date‼

From these two basic terms, Erev and Boker, two additional biblical Hebrew words, evening and morning, were later derived to indicate, respectively, a state of half-darkness, where things are not clearly visible and distinguishable from one another (Erev, evening), and a state of full light, when all is visible, distinct from one another and fully controllable (Boker, morning).

Claim II —  Genesis “Day” is equivalent to a thousand years:

This claim relies on a single verse from Scripture, taken literally:

“For a thousand years in your eyes are like a day that has gone by and like a watch in the night…” (Psalms 90:4).

Incredibly as it seems, this claim is pursued and adopted by many (as judged from viewers’ comments).

My statistical analysis, as described in detail in my book and as presented in popular terms in the 71-minutes video, clearly indicates that a “Day” in Genesis creation story is equivalent to 3.0007 billion years‼

But does Scripture state anywhere that Genesis creation “Days” are no regular days??

Surprisingly, the answer is a resounding Yes‼

Let us carefully read the following verse from Deuteronomy and understand what it implies:

“For ask now for first days, long before your time, from the day that God created man on the earth…” (Deuteronomy 4:32).

This verse explicitly states that “first days” had started with the creation of man, namely, the sixth day of Genesis creation‼!

This verse is in conformance with the Jewish lunar-month-based calendar, which counts years from the day of creation of man, when the first lunar cycle is believed to have started, namely, the sixth day of creation. Furthermore, the verse is also compliant with the well-documented Jewish tradition that man was created on the fourteenth hour of the sixth day (find details in this post). As may be learned therein, this “minor” detail (“fourteenth hour”) serves to calculate average lunar-month duration to an accuracy of five decimal points (29.53059 days vs. NASA’s value of 29.530589 days).

In conclusion:   

Deuteronomy 4:32 explicitly states that “first days” had started with the creation of “man on the earth”, implying that Genesis creation days are no regular days!  

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* Shorty is a short post

Categories
Historical Coincidences My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Faust’s Mephistopheles and Biblical Figures Mephi(boshet) and (Achi)tophel

Has Faust’s Mephistopheles name originated in the Hebrew Bible?

“In a letter to Carl Zelter of November 30, 1829, Goethe admitted that he had no idea what the name Mephistopheles means nor where it came from.”

So starts a somewhat forgotten article by the late Professor Yehuda T. Radday (1913-2011), a research colleague and good friend of mine, who headed the Department of General Studies at Technion (Israel Institute of Technology). In his fascinating article of 1997*, attached herewith, Radday painstakingly demonstrates why both historically (via a thorough literature review), and by analysis of what the three figures represent in the respective literature (Mephistopheles in Goethe’s Faust; Mephiboshet and Achitophel in Second Book of Samuel), Mephistopheles is probably a combo of the names of the two biblical figures, both contemporaries of King David.

The idea of writing this post came to me at an intermission in a concert I attended that included Schoenberg music. A friend of mine reminded me of Schoenberg’s link to the well-known Goethe’s composition Faust (find details in The Doctor Faustus Dossier (Arnold Schoenberg, Thomas Mann, and Their Contemporaries, 1930-1951).

Recalling that my late research colleague and close friend, Y. T. Radday, had summarized his research  about the possible (and intriguing) source of the name of Faust’s central figure, Mephistopheles, I have decided to write this post.

Radday’s article is attached below:

Radday Y.T._Mephistopheles – Biblical-Hebrew Name_1997

Comment: The letter S is added twice to Mephistopheles, not appearing in either Mephiboshet or Achitophel (in their Hebrew original). In Medieval Demonology, Mephistopheles is one of the seven chief devils (and the tempter of Faust). It is an interesting coincidence that the added letter, S, not appearing in the original biblical names, corresponds to the Hebrew letter Samech, which represents, in biblical Hebrew, evil forces!! See details in my post:

The Significance of the Hebrew Samech and Its Occurrence in Names of Enemies of the Jewish Nation

Personal comment: Yehuda Radday passed away concurrently with the victims of September, 11, 2011, while in Israel. Let this post be in honor of his memory.

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* Radday, YT (1997). Mephistopheles — A Biblical Hebrew Name? . Proceedings of the World Congress of Jewish Studies / דברי הקונגרס העולמי למדעי היהדות , 243*-252*. Published by World Union of Jewish Studies.

Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

The Mathematical Structure of the Priests Blessing

The Priestly Blessing, or priestly benediction (Birkat Cohanim), is the blessing delivered by the priests in synagogues on Sabbath, holidays and else. Its source is Leviticus 9:22. Deuteronomy (10:8, 21:5) mentions Aaron or the other priests blessing the Israelites.  Further details may be found on Wikipedia (Priestly Blessing).

The blessing itself is specified in Numbers (6:24–26). Here it is in its original Hebrew:

יְבָרֶכְךָ יהוה וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ; יָאֵר יהוה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וִיחֻנֶּךָּ; יִשָּׂא יהוה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם

Adding the two sentences that serve as prelude and conclusion to the Priestly Blessing (not traditionally considered part of the blessing), we obtain (Numbers 6:23-27):

:אמור להם

;יְבָרֶכְךָ יהוה וְיִשְׁמְרֶךָ; יָאֵר יהוה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וִיחֻנֶּךָּ; יִשָּׂא יהוה פָּנָיו אֵלֶיךָ וְיָשֵׂם לְךָ שָׁלוֹם

ושמו את שמי על בני ישראל ואני אברכם.

Plotting the number of words in successive sentences, {2,3,5,7,8}*, as function of time, we obtain a typical S-shaped graph:

Haim Shore_ S-Shaped Priestly-Blessing

An S-shaped plot is typical to the penetration process into the market of a new product, and, more generally, to any diffusion process (find details, for example, in Shore and Benson-Karhi, 2007).

As it turns out, the mathematical structure of the Priestly Blessing (in terms of progressive word count) reflects a pattern similar to that of a diffusion process!

This implies a powerful lesson that Torah conveys:

Divine blessing is materialized gradually, S-Shaped —

Be patient!  Let God’s blessing take its effect !!!

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* Probability of this orderly sequence to occur by random is 1/120.

Reference: Shore H, Benson-Karhi D (2007). Forecasting S-shaped diffusion processes via response modeling methodology. Journal of the Operational Research Society 58(6):‎720-729‎. DOI: 10.1057/palgrave.jors.2602187

Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: Why “God is He” in biblical Hebrew??

In a recent video by Prager University (“Why God is HE“), Dennis Prager offers some insightful answers.

Here is my comment, as posted therein:

“In the relationship between the Creator and the created — God is always the “Giver”, humankind is always the “Receiver”. In all cultures of the world, the Giver is masculine, the Receiver is feminine. There are good reasons for that, psychological, biological, cultural and historical. And that is the only reason God is invariably referred to in Jewish Hebrew Bible as masculine.”

In this post, I wish to expand on this comment.

In all bi-lateral interactions that one may observe in the world, there is a giver and a receiver. Occasionally, the two sides to the interaction play a double role (as both giver and receiver). Furthermore, there is never a morally preferential, or superior, position to the one over the other. When a sexual interaction results in pregnancy both giver and receiver are equal partners.

Oddly enough, in biblical Hebrew, where nouns are either masculine or feminine, the distinction between “Giver”, as masculine, and “Receiver”, as feminine, is to a large extent maintained (though not as a generally prevailing rule).

Here are some examples:

Givers of heat, light and water — sun (Shemesh), moon (Yareach), star (Kochav), rain (Geshem) — are all masculine (Shemesh is occasionally addressed also as feminine);

The Receivers — Earth (Eretz), land or soil (Karka, Adamah) — are feminine;

However, Afar, of which Adam was formed (“And Jehovah Elohim formed man afar min ha-adamah (grains from the soil)”, Gen. 2:7) is interestingly masculine;

Central parts of the body that deliver to the body — central command, blood, food, oxygen — are all masculine (brain, heart, mouth, nose);

Parts of the body that receive:

  • From within the body — neuro-commands, blood, food, oxygen (hands & legs, kidney, stomach (Kevah), lung);
  • From outside the body — sound, light, objects to grip (ears, eyes, fingers),

are all feminine;

Angel in biblical Hebrew (Malach, deliverer of messages) is masculine;

“State of Peace” delivers peace to its partners (Shalom, masculine); “State of War”, like black hole, always receives, never delivers (Milchamah, feminine).

And what is “World” in its relationship to humankind?? (hint, deliverer…)

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  • Shorty is a short post
Categories
General Shorties

Shorty*: The True Significance of the New Mass-Media Model

In the good olden days, the cost for bringing “Reality” into our living room via mass-media news outlets fell mostly on government and partially on the consumer. Not anymore. The model for delivering news to the customer has fundamentally changed; And a new mass-media model has emerged that has devastating effect on individuals and society, such that most of us most probably are not aware of.

News communication has technologically progressed through time — from radio (and newspapers) to television, to cable and satellite and finally to Internet. As news communication changed its face technologically, another fundamental change has taken place — the consumer ceased to be the main source of revenue for the operation of mass-media news providers. A new model was born — news channels provide content free-of-charge, and advertisement fills the void created by the removal of the traditional major sources supporting operation of mass-media news outlets.

This change, conveying “Reality” to the consumer mixed with ads, has since its inception been exercising devastating effect on how we perceive reality. Suddenly Reality, as reflected to us from the screen (or from the newspaper), is no longer “pure reality”. Instead, it is delivered to us in a mixed form — Reality combined with Temptation, facts of life colored by constant seduction to consume products and services.

What does this unholy marriage of reality and temptation do to our psyche?

Reality and Temptation are addressed by two different parts of our psyche: I and Ego (respectively). Once the formers are mixed on the screen, blurred beyond distinction (where reality becomes temptation and temptation reality), the latter become confused — “I” and “Ego” are inter-mixed, subconsciously no longer able to discern clearly which is which. This causes I to lose its grip on reality, and its control over Ego to be weakened, resulting in devastating consequences to us both as individuals and as members of a civilized society.

I discuss “Ego” and “I”, their inter-relationship and how that affects our ability to exercise free-will, elsewhere on this blog. Let me summarize here succinctly: The “I” mediate between us and reality. It is the ultimate decision-maker within us that allows free-will choices, some of moral and ethical nature, at times going even against our own self-interest, as embodied by the “Ego”. Conversely, the latter is that part of our psyche striving for self-preservation. It does so via various egocentric feelings (like hate, pride, anger, aggression, envy and desire), leading to egocentric actions (like chasing money), ultimately resulting in egocentric outcomes that satisfy ego’s needs (physical needs, like hunger or sex, psychological needs, like the need for security via accumulating property, or social needs, like needs of social benefits or positions of power and control).

What happens to us when reality and temptation, as reflected from the screen, are mixed together so that psychologically distinguishing between them, as we “consume” content delivered by news outlets, becomes ever harder and harder?

A major outcome is that no longer are we able to observe reality clearly and objectively, discerning where reality ends and temptation begins. We start to experience a distorted reality — “Reality” becomes a gigantic seduction. The ultimate decision-maker, “I”, loses its ability to make decisions out of free-will, based on humanistic principles that may be at odds with the “Ego”. “I” no longer control “Ego”, to the contrary, it becomes subjugated to “Ego”. A distorted artificial reality forms — “Taking” and “Consuming” become the dominant motivating forces in how we conduct our life and in how we perceive reality and our life within it. Free-will is extinguished and becomes irrelevant. “Optimization” becomes our sole modus operandi.

But mistaking Reality for Seduction and Temptation has a greater, more devastating outcome. Weakening of control of “I” over “Ego” increases rates of crime and severity of crime (like mass shooting). When reality is no longer perceived as ruled by ethical principles and humanistic or religious believes (when “I” dominates) and only experienced as temptation and seduction — egocentric sentiments become sole players in our psyche. Thus, when we are angry all else vanish from the conscious mind. Anger then becomes a dominant presence in our conscious world, unchallenged by other emotions or considerations. Mass-shooting then becomes a highly likely occurrence.

To avoid this confusion, caused by ads bombarding our psyche as-nauseum, certain “arrangements” are sometimes being installed and practiced. In my home country (Israel), advertisement is barred on certain days of the year, either by state law or by free choice. On Memorial Day, dedicated to remembering the Fallen of Israel (in wars or in terrorist actions), mass-media channels do not deliver ads. The people of Israel then gain the opportunity to solely focus on the reality in which Israel exists, remembering the painful price we had to pay for its survival and for our liberty. On Shabbat (the Jewish holy day of the week), at least one channel in Israel has minimized ads, letting non-religious listeners enjoy Shabbat free of seduction and consumerism.

In Western democracies, current state law and regulation do not acknowledge the correlation between excessive advertisement and increased crime. Therefore, no restrictions are placed on advertisement agencies and on mass-media news outlets to limit the damage they cause to the conscious world of individuals and to society at large.

Perhaps it is high time this had changed.

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* This post may now be read also on The Times of Israel.

* Shorty is a short post

 

Categories
General Shorties

Shorty*: Free will?? — Only when the “Ego” is subjugated to “I”

“Free will” is an essential component of our lives as humans. It refers to common decision scenarios, when we confront multiple choices and one has to be selected. A philosophical question then often arises:

Are we, human beings, free to make our own choices, out of free will? Or are we always just “optimizing”, selecting that which is, or seems to be, best for us?

What is the difference between free-will choice and “optimization”?? And how are these related to two major components of our psyche — “Ego” and “I”?

Observing and studying the centuries-old debate for and against “free will”, one realizes that participants to this debate often do not grasp the true nature of free-will. Once this is cleared and clarified (by answering the above questions), the debate of whether free will exists largely becomes irrelevant and redundant.

What is “optimizing”?

An “Optimization decision” scenario occurs when all factors that may affect our decision are external to our free will and independent of it (or optimization, which always aims to benefit the ego and its needs, could not have taken place). Our behavior in such decision scenarios is therefore purely deterministic, devoid of free will; In fact, a robot, fed with the correct data, could have made the decision for us, possibly even better than we do (since a robot expectedly does not commit errors).

What, then, is the essential ingredient that renders a choice situation from one of optimizing to an exercise of free-will?

The answer is simple:

A “free-will” scenario is one where our ego is made irrelevant to the choice we make.

In other words, in a “free will” scenario, created out of our own free will, all factors affecting our decision are within us, under our control, subject to the ultimate decision-maker within our psyche, the “I” (not to the ego).

What differentiate the “I” from the “Ego”?

The “I”, exercising free will, may decide on giving; The ego, by its very nature, decides only on “taking” (NEVER on giving).

This is perhaps why Jewish prophets so often refer to the Divine as the ultimate embodiment of “I”. Here is prophet Isaiah:

“I am I am Jehovah and besides me there is no deliverer” (Isaiah 43:11); “..I am the first, and I am the last, and besides me there is no God” (Isaiah 44:6); “..I am He, I am the first, I am also the last…  (Isaiah 48:12);  “I I have spoken, Indeed I have called him, I have brought him, and he shall succeed in his way” (Isaiah 48:15).

And this is the ingredient by which to judge whether a choice scenario is a “free will” one:

A free-will scenario always contains a moral and ethical element — Will we act against our own interest, against our own ego, to benefit others? Will we decide to give instead of take? Will we decide to love (give) instead of hate?

Or, in the original language of Chazal (tractate Avot 4:1):

“Who is a hero? — Him, who overcomes his desire”.

(Tractate Avot, or Pirkei Avot, “Ethics of the Fathers”, is a tractate of the Mishna that details Torah’s views on ethics and interpersonal relationships; A modern day PC translation would probably read: “Who is a hero? — Him/her, who overcomes her/his desire”.)

Given these perspectives regarding “free will” and its relationship to the two main ingredients of our soul, the “Ego” and the “I”, a powerful lesson may be learned:

Qualifying a decision scenario as free-will (“I”-related), and acquiring the necessary sensitivity to distinguish it from an “optimization” decision (ego-centered one) — these are first essential steps towards genuine personal growth, moral development and personal maturing.

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* Shorty is a short post

Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: Where “Do Not Steal” Appears in the Ten Commandments

The response to this intriguing question/title may surprise you — “Do Not Steal” does not appear at all in the Ten Commandments; At least, not in the conventional sense.

Jewish scholarship has unanimously agreed, throughout the generations, that the Eighth Commandment (“Do not Steal”) refers solely to “stealing souls”, namely, capturing (taking hostage) of fellow human beings. Rashi (1040-1105), the most revered of Jewish Bible commentators, starts his explanation of “Do not steal” (Exodus 20:13; Deuteronomy 5:17) in no ambiguous words, consistent with how the Talmud perceives this commandment:

 “The written speaks of one who steals souls”.

This interpretation relies on the position of this commandment relative to the two preceding ones, the sixth commandment (“Do not murder”) and the seventh (“Do not commit adultery”); However, it mostly relies on other verses in the Torah, where the concept of “stealing a person for sale” is addressed. For example (bold mine):

  • “He that steals a man and sells him, and found in his hand, shall surely be put to death” (Exodus 21:16);
  • “If a man be found stealing a soul of his brethren of the Children of Israel and deals with him as a slave, or sells him, then that thief shall die; and thou shalt put evil away from amongst you” (Deuteronomy 24:7).

This teaches us of the severity of the Eighth Commandment (“Do not steal”), implying thereby that “Do not steal” in the Ten Commandments could not possibly relate to stealing of property.

Does this imply that prohibition on stealing in the conventional sense, namely, stealing property, does not appear in the Ten Commandments?

Not exactly‼

True, Torah does not explicitly prohibit stealing (in the conventional sense). But it alerts us against harmful one-sided human relationship, the real root-cause of stealing, which may, often inevitably and inescapably, lead to “stealing”:

“Coveting, or desiring, that which is not yours”.

Therefore, the Torah prohibits coveting, root-cause of stealing, in the most expansive and all-inclusive sense of the word (the Tenth Commandment):

  • “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house   Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maiden servant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbor’s” (Exodus 20:14);
  • “Neither shalt thou covet thy neighbor’s wife     Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbor’s house, his field or his manservant or his maidservant, his ox or his ass or anything that is thy neighbor’s” (Deuteronomy 5:18).

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* “Shorty” is a short post

Categories
Shorties

Shorty*: What Do We Know of God?

*Shorty is a short post

This eternal question has been the focus of human endeavors for millennia. Prophet Isaiah delivers a succinct answer to it, describing his vision of the Seraphim crying to each other, saying:

“…Kadosh, Kadosh, Kadosh (Holy, Holy, Holy) is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of his Kavod (Glory)” (Isaiah 6:3).

Based on this verse from the Bible, a Jew prays several times a day in the most sacred part of the daily prayer (Tefilat Shmona-Esre): “You are Kadosh and your name is Kadosh”.

However, the English translation of Kadosh (holy) fails to deliver the full scope of the meaning of the Hebrew-language root K.D.S (ק.ד.ש), source of Kadosh. When a Jewish groom marries his loved one, he recites under the Bridal Canopy (Chuppah), as he places a ring on her finger:

הֲרֵי אַתְּ מְקֻדֶּשֶׁת לִי בְּטַבַּעַת זוֹ כְּדַת משֶׁה וְיִשְׂרָאֵל

(“With this ring, you are consecrated (Mekudeshet) to me according to the law of Moses and Israel”).

The translation is somewhat misleading: there is no intention to state that the bride becomes sanctified, or holy. Rather, that the bride becomes separated, namely, unavailable and inaccessible to other men. Indeed, when we examine various biblical uses of the root K.D.S, this interpretation keeps resurfacing. For example:

“And you shall be holy (Kedoshim) to me for I the Lord am holy (Kadosh) and have separated you from the peoples to be mine” (Leviticus 20:26).

Kadosh simply means separated.

But what does it mean that God is separate? Separate from what?

The first verse of Genesis says it all:

“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Genesis 1:1).

With these seven non-ambiguous Hebrew words, the Bible declares, in its first verse, that pantheism (“God and the world are one”) is null and void:

In the beginning, God has created the spiritual world (“Heavens”) and the physical world (“Earth”); Therefore, God cannot be part of the created. God is separate (Kadosh) and beyond.

This fundamental tenet of the Jewish faith is well rooted in the Torah and in various Jewish interpretations delivered by Jewish rabbis over the ages. Let us address two examples:

Example [1]: One of the Hebrew names for God is “The place (Ha–Makom)”. This bizarre term originated in the following verse, part of the Divine response to Moses request “Show me thy glory (Kevodchah)” (Exodus 33:18):

“And the Lord said, Behold, there is a place with me and thou shall stand upon a rock…; and I will cover thee with my hand while I pass by and I will take away my hand and thou shall see my back but my face shall not be seen” (Exodus 33:21-23).

Jewish rabbis explain the “place”:

(שהוא מקומו של עולם, ואין עולמו מקומו” (בראשית רבה סח, ט”

(“That He is the place of the world, but not the world His place”; Bereshit Rabbah 68:9).

Example [2]: By similar vein:

“..I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee…And He said, thou cannot see my face for no man shall see me and live” (Exodus 33:18-20).

In other words: Seeing God (“my face”) is impossible while we live. No knowledge of God Himself is possible.

We now understand why the Seraphim in Isaiah’s vision turn to God by His most important and significant name, Kadosh, namely separate and beyond His creation.

And that is all we know about God.

Humans cannot know anything else. All other biblical Hebrew names for the Divine, supposedly describing God, are indeed mere coins for observable modes of Divine leadership, via which God sustains and manages His creation; And these modes are all observed post factum, as accurately conveyed in the Bible (“thou shall see my back but my face shall not be seen”).

We, mere mortals, have to make do with this important message and fundamental distinction, expressed so explicitly by the very first verse of Genesis (and repeated elsewhere as we have demonstrated):

God is not part of the world. There was creation: God created the non-physical (“Heavens”) and He created the physical (“Earth”). Therefore, God is Kadosh (separate) and His name is Kadosh.

 

 

 

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My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: “World is My Own and I have Made Myself”— A Tale of Two Cultures

Prophet Ezekiel is prophesying on doomsday destiny of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and on doomsday destiny of Egypt’s ego-centered culture, of which Pharaoh is top representative. Ezekiel quotes the life-philosophy of that culture:

“Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I am against thee, Pharaoh, king of Egypt, the great crocodile who couches within the midst of his streams, who has said “Yeor is my own and I have made myself” (Ezekiel 29:3).

What is the message conveyed by the prophet?

Yeor is biblical Hebrew for the Nile river, source of life that flows throughout Egypt and has enabled, throughout history, flourishing Egyptian civilization and human habitation, even though rain is rare in this geographical region. There is seemingly no need in this region for the grace of the Divine to live (have water). The constantly flowing Nile provides that commodity aplenty throughout the year and no prayer to the Divine for life-giving rain is required. The immediate consequence is this: “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice to let Israel go? I know not the Lord, nor will I let Israel go” (Exodus 5:2).

Not surprisingly, the life-giving Yeor had been raised by ancient Egyptians to the level of Deity, as told to us by historians of ancient Egypt. Prophet Ezekiel succinctly summarizes the underlying philosophy of the supreme being of Egypt, King Pharaoh: Not only has he raised himself to the level of Deity (“I produced myself”) but he has also made the world in which he lived, the Nile river (“the world of the great crocodile”) his own (“Yeor is my own”). Contrast this with the prevailing Scripture principle: “How manifold are thy works, O Jehovah, in wisdom have you made them all” (Psalms 104:24).

The Land of Israel is diametrically at odds with the Land of Egypt. And the Torah finds it necessary to explicitly state the essential difference in the physical reality encountered by human beings living in the two regions:

“For the land, into which thou go to possess it, is unlike the land of Egypt… where you sow thy seed and water it with thy foot, as in a garden of vegetables; The land, which you transit into to possess it, is a land of hills and valleys, by rain of heaven would thou drink water” (Deuteronomy 11:10-12).

Two regions, naturally (but not necessarily) leading to two cultures: One culture expressing no faith in the Divine (“I have produced myself”) or in Divine intervention (“World is my own”); Another based on inherent faith in the Divine and in Divine intervention.

The story of Pharaoh is not singular in the Bible. In fact, its underlying theme resurfaces in three different variations (as will be expounded soon). The background “story” differs between variations. Yet, the underlying theme remains the same, and this same theme has re-surfaced as a major guiding principle in today’s prevailing culture, contrary to what a simple fact-finding exploration might have taught us.

After nearly five hundred years of modern science (starting with its initiators, like Copernicus (1473-1543), Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) and Isaac Newton (1642-1727)), and accompanied by advances in technology that have immensely improved our well-being (and occasionally also our “bad-being”), humankind has not moved one iota closer to solving the fundamental mysteries of human existence on Earth, mysteries that confront us every single day of our lives:

* Why are we here?

* Where have we come from and where are we going to (if at all)?

* Why does the world exist?

* How has the universe come into being out of nothing?

* Is there God?

Yet, advances in science and technology (modern day “eating of the fruit of knowledge”) have blinded us to this grim reality and hid it from our vision. Consequently, we find ourselves today unknowingly in the same state-of-mind as were Adam and Eve, as were the builders of the Tower of Babel, as was Pharaoh, king of Egypt:

* Adam and Eve wished to eat of the fruit of knowledge to be Elohim-like (knowing law of nature, thereby controlling nature); Yet they ignored the true name of God, Jehovah-Elohim, which conveys the double-faceted leadership of the Divine in our world. The narrator of the story of the Forbidden Fruit repeats this double-name no less than eleven times, using no other name for the Divine; Yet Eve and the Serpent relate only to Elohim. For not desiring at all to be also Jehovah-like, Adam and Eve were doomed to be expelled from the Garden of Eden, with the Serpent, which can never advance in a straight-line, becoming their permanent escort;

* The people of the city of Babel, led by Nimrod (literally meaning “Let us rebel”; Genesis 10:9-10), have just developed new technologies to rule nature and have proven them viable: “And they said to one another, Come, let us make bricks and burn them thoroughly; And they had brick for stone and slime had they for mortar” (Genesis 11:2). Once the people of Babel have become aware of their newly acquired technological capabilities, allowing control of nature, the immediate aftermath of this realization is not unlike modern day response to current-day scientific and technological advances: “Let us build us a city and a tower whose top reaches Heaven” (Genesis 11:4);

* Pharaoh: “Yeor is my own and I have made myself” (Ezekiel 29:3).

Three biblical stories telling same story in three varieties. They all convey same human condition in which we find ourselves today (only to the extreme), resulting in an identical response:

“World is My Own and I have Made Myself”

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*Shorty is a short post

Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: Scripture on “Animals Killing Animals”

How does Scripture relate to killing scenarios (human beings, animals, within and in between) — “Human beings killing human beings”; “Animals killing animals”; “Human beings killing animals”.

What does the Bible declare about all these killing scenarios, at present and in future?? 

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Human beings killing human beings. Is this natural?

The Bible is very definite: No!!! And there is cost to be paid!! Scripture provides verses aplenty to drive this home. Examples:

* “Whoso sheds man’s blood by man shall his blood be shed; For in the image of God has He made man” (Genesis 9:6)

* “Thou shalt not murder…”    (Exodus 20:13, Deuteronomy 5:13)

* “ ..nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more” (Isaiah 2:4).

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Animals killing animals. Is this natural?

The Bible is very definite: No!!!

At present, “animals killing animals” is natural, not an anomaly; However, this is so merely for a limited time, just for the time being!!

“Animals killing animals” is, per Scripture, a display of evil,  unacceptable and against Divine will. Therefore, in future, when “things” finally fall into their (correct) place, peace prevails and world order restored to its natural course, cruelty of predators (“animals killing animals”) would disappear and predators become plant-eating animals; Or, alternatively, predators themselves would be extinguished from the surface of Earth, leaving to survive only “non-evil” animals:

*  “The wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid…the lion shall eat straw like the ox; the sucking child shall play on the hole of the cobra and the young child put his hand on the viper’s nest; They shall neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the water covers the sea” (Isaiah 11:6-9);

* “Wolf and lamb shall feed together and the lion shall eat straw like the ox and dust will be a serpent’s bread” (Isaiah 65:25);

* “And I will make with them a covenant of peace and will cause the evil beasts to cease out of the land… “ (Ezekiel 34:25);

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Human beings killing animals. Is this natural?

* “And God said: Behold I have given you every herb bearing seed that is upon the face of the whole earth and every tree having fruit yielding seed to you it shall be for food” (Genesis 1:29);

* “..replenish the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground” (Genesis 1:28; refer also to Genesis 9:2);

* “…I will not again curse the ground any more for man’s sake; for the impulse of man’s heart is evil from his youth…” (Genesis 8:21); And soon thereafter: “Every moving thing that is alive shall be for you to eat; Like the green plants am I giving you all” (Genesis 9:3).

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*Shorty is a short post

 

Categories
Shorties

Shorty*: Anger — Best Opportunity to Transition from “I-It” to “I-Thou”

Introspection of what is occurring within us as we become angry with one we care about delivers best possible opportunity to move from perceiving others as “It” to a corrected perception as “Thou”; Moving from perceiving the not-me as “Ego-Other” to a corrected perception as “Non-Ego Other“.

Some terms in the opening paragraph needs explanation and for that I relate to the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber (1878-1965 ), whose philosophy revolves around two fundamental concepts describing how one may relate to all that surround him/her: “You” (Ata/At) and “That One” (Ha-Laz); Or, in Buber’s terminology, two types of relationships between “I” and the external world:

“I-Thou” and “I-It”.

Since my twin concepts, “Ego-Other” and “Non-Ego Other”, somewhat overlap with those of Buber, I would first explain the two pairs of concepts and then relate to how extremely instrumental they are regarding Tikun (“Correction”), achievable when we become angry with someone we care about; And then, by extension, the Tikun that may prevail in all of our relations with other human beings, including perhaps even those that we “do not so much care about”, namely, total strangers.

Buber distinguishes between two modes of relating to the world around us—  “You” and “That One” (in Buber’s parlance, “Thou” and “It”), and he had repeated this distinction on numerous occasions. To understand it more deeply perhaps it is best to quote from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (A Peer-Reviewed Academic Resource):

Martin Buber “is best known for his 1923 book, Ich und Du (I and Thou), which distinguishes between “I-Thou” and “I-It” modes of existence…In his later essays, he defines man as the being who faces an “other” and constructs a world from the dual acts of distancing and relating.”  Buber’s philosophy “is based on a distinction between two word-pairs that designate two basic modes of existence: “I-Thou” (Ich-Du) and “I-It” (Ich-Es). The “I-Thou” relation is the pure encounter of one’s whole unique entity with another in such a way that the other is known without being subsumed under a universal. Not yet subject to classification or limitation, the “Thou” is not reducible to spatial or temporal characteristics. In contrast to this, the “I-It” relation is driven by categories of “same” and “different” and focuses on universal definition. An “I-It” relation experiences a detached thing, fixed in space and time, while an “I-Thou” relation participates in the dynamic, living process of an “other”… Buber characterizes “I-Thou” relations as “dialogical” and “I-It” relations as “monological.” In his 1929 essay “Dialogue,” Buber explains that monologue is not just a turning away from the other but also a turning back on oneself (Rückbiegung). To perceive the other as an “It” is to take others as classified and hence predictable and manipulable, objects that exist only as part of one’s own experiences. In contrast, in an “I-Thou” relation both participants exist as polarities of relation, whose center lies in the between (Zwischen).”

The concept of the dual relations, “I-Thou” versus “I-It”, is not much different from the dual concept introduced by me in explaining the underlying Five Principles of the Ten Commandments: A “Non-Ego Other” and an “Ego-Other”. Therein I wrote, explaining the meaning of these complementary terms (as used throughout the post):

“To understand the concept of “Non-Ego Other”, it is perhaps best to define the opposite. An “Ego other” is a human being whom one considers an extension of his/her own ego. The epitome for an “Ego other” is a slave. However, “Ego other” may appear in more obscure forms, where the potential exists, like a personal assistant, a subordinate (at work), one’s own child or a spouse. All forms of “Ego other” are morally wrong.”

To merge together the above two definitions of the dual-relation that exists in all forms of our relating to the outside world (human beings included), we summarize it as follows:

  • One may relate to another human being as equal to one’s own self. In that case, you perceive the other as whole human being, “Thou” or “Non-Ego Other”, who is deserving of all privileges deemed as inalienable rights to your own self. Two chief consequences of that relationship are “Love thy neighbor as yourself” and “Do not do unto others that which is hateful to you”;
  • Or one may alternatively relate to another human being as extension of the ego in the sense that, as we use our hands and legs and voice and other parts of the body to achieve various goals that satisfy the ego, we likewise use other human beings for same purpose. The “Ego-Other” then becomes part of the inventory of means and ways available to the ego to achieve its goals. In that relationship, the “I” is detached from “You”, who then becomes “It”; And the “Non-Ego Other” becomes an ”Ego-Other”.

The best time to witness the two relations co-exist, co-habituate though in the process of replacing one by the other, is when we become angry with one we care about. This is the best time, indeed an opportunity, to realize the difference between “You” and “It”, “Non-Ego Other” vs. “Ego-Other”, so that we may practice, from within ourselves, to eliminate, in each pair, the latter for the former.

What happens to us when we become angry with someone we care about?

First: Detachment. We emotionally detach ourselves from our partner to an “I-You” dialogue so that a replacement, an “I-It” monologue, takes its place. Once detachment is achieved, a process characteristic to “I-It” relation starts: We label, we classify, we become alienated from the “It” while comparing it to other “It”s, and we start considering means and ways to achieve the ego’s objectives against the one who, just a moment prior, has served as “You” in an “I-You” dialogue. The partner to that dialogue, the former “Non-Ego Other”, suddenly becomes an “Ego-Other”, a subject to the ego’s desires through which to achieve its goals (probably of an aggressive nature).

Needless to assert, once again, that a Tikun starts to take place when we eliminate from our inventory of modes of relating to others the “You-It” relationship, the “Ego-Other” perception of our partner to communication and the subject to our responses; And the Tikun is completed once we revoke “I-You” relations with all living entities surrounding us so that only “I-You” relation exists; and only a “Non-Ego Other” is experienced by us in relating to others, and in determining our responses to all forms of communication received by us.

Experiencing the transformation that takes place within ourselves as we transition from a state of “I-You” to a state of “I-It”, from feeling equal to the* “Non-Ego Other” to experiencing the other as an* “Ego Other” (a legitimate target for the ego’s goals), this experience constitutes best opportunity for a personal transformation.

And that transformation may be achieved when, and if, we witness with wide-open eyes the two sorts of relations, the “I-Thou” and the “I-It”, as within ourselves the latter suddenly start replacing the former when we suddenly become angry.

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* A widely-known joke about British males is that when British husbands relate to their wives they would utter “The wife”, but otherwise it is “My car”. An excellent opportunity for Tikun..

I do not take responsibility for the authenticity and truth of that joke. However, I can personally bear witness for some grain of truth in it as I once realized, watching on TV an interview with a Royal Navy officer that had served far away from home and asked what he missed most…

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*Shorty is a short post

Categories
General Shorties

Shorty*: “Desert” as Epitome for a Potential Culture of Hatred

The culture of the desert is perhaps the best allegory for the conditions that may ultimately lead to the development of a culture of hatred in human society. The ego operates in two modes:

* Expressing free will (with all its variants);

* Realizing (implementing) free will.

Among others, emotions are an expression of free will. Having the potential to control our emotions by struggling with them and possibly modify them, emotions are part and parcel of the repository of modes by which free will expresses itself. Two potentially devastating expressions of free will are hatred and anger.

Where do they originate?

Anger has been the subject of much discourse in Jewish and non-Jewish scholarship (within science or otherwise), and it seems to be generally accepted that anger is the ego’s major response to blocking/ignoring free will in its two modes of operandi:

  • When the ego is obstructed in expressing its free will, either by threat of severe penalty or by rejection by fellow human beings. Typical examples are when the ego believes certain knowledge about reality to be true and significant others reject it as false; or when one’s ego, with all varieties of its expressions, is ignored (by display of indifference);
  • When the ego is obstructed in accomplishing its free will, for example, when a certain repair is required (within ourselves or outwardly) and the ego is incapable of accomplishing this repair (Tikun in Hebrew).

Controlling pride is conducive to controlling anger.

Where does hatred originate?

While hatred obviously may be associated with anger, or follow anger, it is a distinct and separate emotion that may express itself detached from any feeling of anger. To understand hatred, I believe that one needs go no farther than understanding the fundamental meaning of “Desert” as epitome for separation (lack of communication) and the resultant hatred.

Why is “Desert” the epitome for a potential culture of hatred?

Living in “Desert” implies living in separate communities, extremely isolated from one another due to harsh nature conditions. In such circumstances, daily communication between communities is rare and hard to come by. This generates a separation between “Us” and “Them”, between “Us” and “Not us” fellow human beings affiliated to “Not us” communities. In an environment of extreme isolation between communities, a sense of suspicion towards the “others”, the “Not us”, is rampant. Lack of daily communication between isolated communities tends to form a natural sense of suspicion and distrust between “Us” and “Them”, a remnant of which we may still see nowadays in the common gesture of hugging each other upon meeting. This gesture, already referred to in Genesis (29:13), originally expressed a fundamental sense of distrust where the hug aimed at finding out whether the seemingly amiable person, who has just arrived to the “Us community”, carried a hidden sword at his back. The hug thus became a sort of ancient extreme vetting, to borrow a modern-day term.

In such an environment of isolation and hostile nature conditions, where lack of daily communication between isolated communities tends to create a culture of suspicion and distrust towards the “Not us”, the path is short to a potential culture of hatred. The ego’s path to acknowledging, being aware of, respecting and accommodating free-wills of “Not us”, this path is blocked. Lack of daily communication may ultimately lead to unrestrained hatred towards the “Other”, embedded in a potential culture of hatred.

The Hebrew language fully support this interpretation for the source of hatred:

  • Mount Sinai, where Torah was given to the ancient Israelites, has in Hebrew a connotation of hatred (Sinah in Hebrew). This triggered the following assertion by a Jewish rabbi: “Why Mount Sinai? that this is where hatred descended (unto the world)” (Babylonian Talmud, Masechet Shabbat, Ch. 9).
  • Probably not coincidentally, Hebrew for “Other” (Acher) and “Back” (Achor), share the same root in Hebrew. Since Achor is that part of the body that one can see only when the face cannot be seen, the Hebrew language links “back” to “other” and denotes the latter— Acher, namely, the one whose “face” (Panim, written like Pnim, “inside”) cannot be accessed (probably due to lack of communication).

In recent years, communication between human beings, unhindered by “Desert” conditions, has become a major platform for reducing hatred worldwide. One can now more fully appreciate the major shift taking place in human history with the advent of modern day easily accessible personal communication. This development has served to attain a major objective in the evolution of the human species on Earth: Reducing hatred originating in “Desert” due to lack of communication, and allowing fellow human beings accessing each other and consequently acknowledging each other’s own free wills.

Does living in “Desert”, in separation between “we” and “them”, necessarily lead to cultures of hatred, such as currently witnessed in various parts of the world where communities do actually dwell in desert?

Not necessarily. Observe what Rabbi Akiva (50-132) considered as the departure point for studying the whole of Torah: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself”, this is the essence of Torah; all else is interpretation”. This culture of love combined with justice and righteousness had originally formed, contrary to human nature, in “Desert” conditions, literally in the desert, in the Sinai desert.

A major and important lesson may be learned:

Communities separated by “Desert” are not doomed to live in a culture of hatred. With today’s available communication, overcoming a culture of hatred and modifying it in a fundamental way is a relatively easily accessible option. Carriers of cultures of hatred, leaders of cultures of hatred, only need to summon up their free will to apply the much-needed transformation so that “Desert”, as a way of living, may once and for all be eradicated from the face of the earth.

*Shorty is a short post

Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: Why Genesis Third Day is Unlike the Rest?

Is Third Day in Genesis Creation narrative the same as other Days?? My statistical model for Genesis creation links the scientific time-scale (in terms of billions of years since Big-Bang) to Genesis narrative (in terms of “Days”). However, Third Day narrative had been excluded from the data used in the statistical analysis that led to the final highly-significant statistical model.

Why was that?

The answer is straightforward: Genesis narrative for Third Day (Genesis 1:9-13) implies that Earth and all vegetation (plants, trees, grass and else) had preceded formation of the sun and the moon on the fourth day (“and God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night”, Genesis 1:16).

This seems strange and defies current scientific knowledge. Thus, the mystery remains: If all other Genesis “Days” fit nicely (in the statistical model) with current scientific knowledge, what is special about Third Day that it does not?

I have long been tormented by this question, which seems to undermine and defy the notion that Genesis Creation is a faithful description of the timeline of modern science (as has been validated via the highly-significant statistical model). But then I was reminded of a known idiom, repeatedly uttered by Jewish sages:

“Torah spoke as in human language” (“דברה תורה כלשון בני אדם”).

What this idiom implies is that although Torah source is Divine it does speak in human terms so that humans can understand Torah and relate to it.

To realize how this idiom is relevant to the “Third Day Quandary”, let us be reminded of the prevailing world view throughout ancient times, in fact until the time of Copernicus (1473-1543). The prevailing view was the geocentric model (also known as Geo-centrism, or the Ptolemaic system; In what follows we pursue Wikipedia, “Geocentric model”). This model reigned supreme for over 1500 years of human history, and it had served as cornerstone description of the cosmos in numerous ancient civilizations, such as those of Aristotle and Ptolemy. According to this model, the sun, moon, stars, and planets all encircle Earth (“geo”), therefore Earth is the center of the universe.

Two observations supported this idea:

  • The sun appears to revolve around Earth once per day. While the moon and the planets have their own particular motions, which change over time, they also appear to revolve around Earth about once per day. The stars appeared to be on a celestial sphere, rotating once each day along an axis through the north and south geographic poles of Earth;
  • Earth does not seem to move from the perspective of an Earth-bound observer; it appears to be solid, stable, and unmoving.

(refer, however, to page 118 in my book, where I describe why Rabbi Don Yitzchak Abarbanel (1437-1508) expressed objection to the geocentric model, based purely on his logical analysis of the root of the Hebrew word for Earth).

Geocentrism (Ptolemy’s geocentric model) stayed unchallenged in Western culture until the 16th century, when, through the synthesis of the theories of Copernicus and Kepler, it was gradually superseded by the current scientifically validated Heliocentric model (Sun-centered model) of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler.

Genesis Third Day description is realization of the geocentric world view, prevailing in ancient times. If the sun and the moor rotate around Earth, the latter must have been formed earlier than the former. There is no other way to describe creation and remain faithful to the intuitive geocentric view. Thus, Genesis Third Day narrative had become a prerequisite for Genesis creation to preserve any semblance of reliability. Being consistent with the then prevailing geocentric world view, Torah ensured that the ancient Israelites would have accepted it as of Divine origin and not reject it outright as utterly false. Just try to imagine Torah telling ancient Israelites that the sun and mood, rotating Earth, had been formed prior to Earth. Would Torah then be acceptable to them? “Torah spoke as in human language”.

Is there any signature to the Third Day, pointing to it as somewhat unlike all other days?

I believe there is: This is the only day where the words “and God saw that it was good” appear twice. This is in stark contrast to the “routine” employed in all other days, where Torah expresses this idea in its typical succinct way, namely, stating this only once.

This unique feature of the Third Day perhaps has a mission: Telling us that this description of events, supposedly taking place on Third Day, intends to speak to us in the then humanly comprehensible language. But only for a limited period of time, that is, until the emergence of the scientifically validated Helio-centric world view.

Exclusion of Third Day events from the data, used to derive the highly significant statistical model, thus seems to be corroborated and completely justified.

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*Shorty is a short post

Categories
My Research on the Bible and Biblical Hebrew Shorties

Shorty*: What Ultimately Comforted Job?

Job feels he is righteous and has done no harm. Why bad things happen to good people?? What ultimately gives Job comfort?

The first of the Ten Commandments reads:

“I am Jehovah, your Elohim, who have brought thee out of the Land of Egypt, of the house of slaves” (Exodus 20:2).

This commandment looks more like a declaration:

  • There is God;
  • There is Divine Providence (Hashgacha Pratit: “For His eyes are upon the ways of man, and He sees all his goings”, Job 33:21).

What then transforms this “declaration of facts”, “description of reality”, into a commandment?

“Why bad things happen to good people” is an ancient quandary that has occupied the minds of thinking people for millennia. We have likewise addressed this issue in this post. As related therein, perhaps the ultimate source to address this issue is the biblical book of Job, not coincidentally attributed to Moses. The story of Job is well known:

“In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil” (Job 1:1). Furthermore, he had a family and much property so that “…this man was the greatest of all the men of the East” (Job 1:3).

Alas, one day the angels came before Jehovah, among them Satan, and the latter challenged the Divine that Job is “blameless and upright and fears God and shuns evil” (as described by God; Job 1:8) only because Job was protected and blessed by God (Job 1:9-10). God then delivers Satan the permission to harm Job any way he wished (“all that he has is in thy power”) except for taking Job’s soul (Job 1:12). Thus, Satan was allowed by God to test Job so that all may realize whether Job, despite all “bad things” that had befallen him, remained faithful to his former self.

Following description of the “bad things”, three of Job’s friends come to visit him “to mourn with him and to comfort him” (Job 2:11). The multi-sided dialogue that then develops, between Job and his friends, is in essence a debate on whether “Bad things happen to good people”. Job holds on to his basic conviction that he is “blameless and upright and fears God and shuns evil” and therefore he is helpless to explain all the harm that has befallen him. The friends defy this claim and elaborate on why it is illogical and impossible to assume that the perfect God would allow this to happen, therefore concluding that Job probably is not “blameless”, as he pretends to be.

Job remains unconvinced and therefore also uncomforted.

What then ultimately comforted Job?

Throughout Scripture, a single theme keeps resurfacing: “The ways by which Jehovah leads his world are unknown to us and therefore humanly unexplainable”.

Examples:

  • “I will be Whoever I will be” (Exodus 3:14)
  • “I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy” (Exodus 33:19)
  • “And Moses said to Jehovah…show me thy way that I may know thee” (Exodus 33:12-13), and Jehovah said “you cannot see my face for no man shall see me and live...” (Exodus 33:20); Therefore, “thou shall see my back and my face shall not be seen” (Exodus 33:23). Re-phrased: One may witness the results of Divine leadership and intervention in the world; these, however, cannot be explained (predicted) in advance, neither can they be explained post-factum. These results remain only to be witnessed!

The debate between Job and his friends comes to an abrupt conclusion when Jehovah intervenes in the debate. The essence of God’s explanation for “Why bad things happen to good people” is a genuine mystery:

“Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?” (Job 38:4)

Obviously, this does not constitute a satisfactory answer to the basic question. Surprisingly, Job is now comforted and he expresses this explicitly:

“I have heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now that my eye has seen you I abhor myself and am comforted for the dust and ashes” (Job 42:5).

(Note that “dust and ashes” are signs of mourning, as mentioned early on in Job 2:12.)

Job had not received an answer to the basic question “Why bad things happen to good people”. Yet, once God has spoken to him, Job is comforted. He understands that there is Divine Providence and there is no more room for the basic question— silence is the right response (“..and Aharon kept his silence”, Leviticus 10:3).

We, mere mortals, are not privileged as was Job. We are “doomed” to exist in a universe of free will, and the latter cannot co-exist with the certainty that God exists and that there is Divine Providence. Either we have free will or we know for certain that God exists. Both, by definition, cannot co-exist. Job, once being exposed to God speaking to him, is no more a man of free will. We are.

The first of the Ten Commandments, outwardly looking like a mere declaration of facts, is in fact a commandment that demands of us the ultimate expression of free-will:

“Out of free will I accept as faithful description of reality existence of Elohim-Jehovah; Out of free will I accept as faithful description of reality existence of Divine Providence (Hashgacha Pratit)”.

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*Shorty is a short post

Categories
Shorties

“Judge” and “King”— “Submission” vs. “Liberty”, “Law” vs. “Total Free-will”, “Nature” vs. “Randomness”

Judge and King define in a fundamental way two extreme states of the human condition. Judge has no free-will of its own. All Judge does is comparing its experience (internal and external) to pre-specified standards in order to determine appropriate punishment, based on observed degree-of-compliance; King is free-will bound by no law and nobody, accountable to none.

Judge, devoid of free will, believes that  source of morality is exclusively external, originating in the Divine (or any recognized/adopted historic authority). Individual human intelligence, wisdom and experience have no part in formulating precepts of morality. King, devoid of faith in any external authority that would limit its liberty, believes that the sole source of morality is humankind, more specifically, human beings exercising their free-will, their wisdom and good judgment.

Judge imposes structure, defines “identity”; King strives to express its will within the confines of that identity.

Human history is permeated by constant struggle between the two extreme states.

Examples for “Judge” are “ideologies” that have attempted, throughout history, to repress free-will of individuals and nations and subjugate them to the “ideology”. Examples:

  • Religions’ regimes, imposed by ruling establishments like the inquisition in Spain of the Middle-Ages;
  • Twentieth-century political ideologies that sought no compromise with individual freedoms, like Communism and Nazism;
  • Present-day extreme forms of Islam (“Submission” in Arabic).

Example for “King” is present-day Liberal Democracies of Western Civilization, holding dear that one is free to do whatever one’s heart desires (“King”) so long as it harms none (a little taste of “Judge”).

The struggle between “Judge” and “King” permeates every aspect of our lives:

  • We experience the restrictive “Law-of-Nature” (“Judge”), which punishes for violations; But we also experience randomness (source for “King”), where we may exercise unhindered our free-will ;
  • We experience the restrictive state’s regulations and laws (“Judge”); But we also experience (in democracies) areas where state law does not apply so that “King” can reign supreme;
  • From within we are both a “Judge”, judging ourselves and others according to a set of standards that we pursue (partly unconsciously); But we are also “King”, expressing our own free-will and desires, occasionally allowing others exercise the same..

The Torah is well aware that “Judge” and “King” need to co-exist so that they accommodate one another to bring about a blessed compromise. Being well aware that leaving any out would result in catastrophic extremism, the Torah specifies in painstaking detail the system-of-law, judges and officers, that the Children of Israel should have but hurriedly specifies, in a balancing act, that a king is also needed:

“Judges and officers shall thou make thee in all thy gates, which the Lord thy God gives thee throughout thy tribes; and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment..” (Deuteronomy 16:18);

and immediately thereafter (Deuteronomy 17:15):

“..thou may appoint a king over thee, whom the Lord thy God shall choose..”.

“Judge” and “King”— “Submission” vs. “Liberty”; “Nature” vs. “Randomness”; “Law” vs. “Free-will”

The struggle between “Judge” and “King” has reached mammoth proportions in recent decades, resulting in ISIS (the “Judge”), on the one hand, and projection of the rainbow colors onto the While House (the “King”), on the other hand.

Will 3rd World War be waged between the ultimate “Judge” and the ultimate “King”??

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  • An excellent talk (in Hebrew) about the distinction between “Judge” and “King” and its implications and ramifications is Rabbi Haim Dynovisz (רב חיים דינוביץ):

“Judge” and “King” by Rabbi Haim Dynovisz

Categories
Shorties

Shorty*: “Speak Hebrew and Be Righteous”

Speaking Hebrew one is led, perhaps unconsciously, to adhere to the basic concepts and tenets of Jewish tradition, in particular “Be Righteous!”. In this shorty, I demonstrate this by addressing seven Hebrew words (having five different philological roots). In all examples, it is assumed that different words sharing same root must somehow be inter-related (even though outwardly the compared words seem not to be sharing anything in common). We emphasize that these examples do not relate to Gematria, which assumes that two words sharing a numerical value must somehow be inter-related.

The first two examples appear in detail in my book.

Example 1: “Sin” is not the result of evil but rather an aberration due to missing the target (“Sin” and “Miss” share same root in Hebrew)

Example 2: There are three modes of standing before God:

“Thanking”, “Acknowledging”, “Admitting” (a sin).

They all share same philological root in Hebrew, giving rise to the single Hebrew verb Le-Hodot (which imparts respective meanings to all three modes of relating to God).

Examples 3 and 4: “Thing” in Hebrew is Davar (derived from same root as “to speak”, Le-Daber); “Object” in Hebrew is Chefetz (meaning also “Will” or “Wish”).

The obvious implication for a Hebrew-speaking user of these “generic” words is unconscious acknowledgment that all that exists is the result of God’s will and speak. Genesis creation narrative could not have been more explicit!!

Example 5: “Resentment” (or “Grudge”) is in Hebrew Tinah ;  Tin is Hebrew for “Silt” (mud that sinks to the bottom of the pool).

The Hebrew language educates: Resentment is like silt. The latter rests silently at the bottom of the pool, nearly undetected, until the pool’s water is disturbed. The mud then rises up to blur and obscure all that shape up under the surface of the water.

Likewise, resentment can be hidden from view (even your own) until triggered into action. Once activated, old grudges rise up to blur and obscure all that is shaping up inside your psyche, rendering your soul non-transparent. This results in distorted vision of reality, in impairing relationships with family and friends and ultimately in poor judgement in decision-making scenarios.

The Hebrew language advises:

Resentment stains your soul, therefore it is impure and unholy; Be righteous by letting go of old grudges; Get rid of resentment!!

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* A “Shorty” is a newly invented word for a new idea or thought, expressed as “shortly” as possible..

Categories
Shorties

Shorty*: The Human Desire to be like God

At the core of all human endeavors is the burning desire to be like God. The desire is already expressed in the third chapter of Genesis:  “For God knows that on the day you eat of it” (of the Fruit of Knowledge) “then your eyes shall be opened and you shall be as God..” (Genesis 3:5).

But what does it mean to be like God?

The serpent expresses it explicitly: “You shall be like Elohim, knowing good and bad” (Genesis 3:5)  (Elohim is Hebrew for God as the creator).

Jewish prophets have incessantly preached differently:

“I am Jehovah speaking righteousness, I declare things that are right” (Isaiah 45:19) (Jehovah is Hebrew for God as source of morality and virtues).

Human history is the tale of nations and individuals seeking to be as powerful as Elohim via dominating resources (whether of knowledge, of humans beings (erroneously perceived as resource) or of physical properties).

Human history is also a tale of nations and individuals ignoring the message of the Jewish prophets that to be like God also means to be like Jehovah

(all the while concurrently harming the carriers of this inconvenient message).

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* A “Shorty” is a newly invented word for a new idea or thought, expressed as shortly as possible..